It Came To Mind That You Don't Care
by Kiyoshi Kitana
Summary: PG-13, Sam-centric, Spoilers for episodes 5.01 and 5.02. He's wandering aimlessly and he knows it.


**Title:** It Came To Mind That You Don't Care  
**Author:** Kitana  
**Warnings:** PG-13, Sam-centric, Spoilers for episodes 5.01 and 5.02. _He's wandering aimlessly and he knows it._ ~1400 words.  
**Notes:** This is kind of a nothing piece, actually. I just wanted to write bits about how Sam felt before, during, and after the events in ep. 5.02.

***

Sam doesn't know what to think anymore. He knew something was wrong with the way Dean avoided talking to him, but this? Now? Everything is so deeply wrong that Sam doesn't even know where the pieces of his former life stop being jagged.

Dean barely looks at him anymore, and especially not tonight after leaving Bobby's side at the hospital. Dean pulls them up into a different motel – further from Bobby, but marginally safer – pays for it, eats, showers, and manages to not make eye contact once the entire night.  
Sam can't blame Dean for being upset – his fuckups were pretty colossal, Sam will admit now – but Sam's tired of Dean's prickliness, his averted gaze. He really does want to go back to what they had, before Castiel, before Ruby. When it was just the two of them fucking around, hunting things.

Sam lies awake that night, not able to sleep for want of peace with Dean. He ends up watching Dean toss and turn and alternately kick off sheets and burrow under them. Sam remembers a time when Dean slept peacefully, if not deeply. That's just another thing that, apparently, isn't and never will be the same.

It makes Sam's chest ache.

*

Each day, Dean's words echo in Sam's head. That simple "we can't be what we were" keeps popping up, shaking him when he's close to cracking a joke about Dean's habits, or feeling the urge to brush against Dean the way he used to.

Today they're just waiting, looking for signs of Lucifer, or his vessel, or really just anything that can send them in the right direction. Dean is an impenetrable wall right now, lying on his bed and staring at the ceiling, but Sam, he's far from that. He's so worn down by the steely silences that when he says Dean's name, and Dean gives him a sharp look (never anything more, these days), he can't be bothered to flinch away from it anymore.

"Could you stop… shutting me out?" Sam says softly, tentatively.

Dean's voice is flat. "I'm not."

Sam sits up, swinging his legs off of his bed. He stares at Dean full on, and Dean – like usual, Goddamnit – looks somewhere else.

"Yes you are, Dean. I know what you said—"

Dean cuts Sam off abruptly. "If you know what I said, why do you keep trying to talk around it?"

Sam doesn't have anything to say back to that, and again, Dean has effectively shut down the conversation.

*

The eighth day of his words either meeting silence or Iron Maiden, Sam decides that something else needs to change. . There's really nothing he can say as of late that doesn't send Dean either into fits, or into an emotional shutdown, and he's at a loss for what else to do.  
So after they manage to dispatch War (for now, he's sure that he'll be back with his siblings in tow), Sam tells Dean that they need to split up.

Dean doesn't even put up a token resistance, and despite how much that simple non-gesture tears a gash right into his chest, Sam can't stand to walk away without looking back first. He gets into a truck with Carl, who promises to drop him off at the next town big enough to have rental cars, and watches Dean stare off into the horizon.  
He watches until Carl pulls off and it hurts too much to crane his neck back. Then he sighs, and tries to think about his next move.

*

He's wandering aimlessly and he knows it. Sam hasn't done anything except hunt for the past three years, and now that he can't, it adds to the empty hollowness inside of him. It's half past noon, he has nowhere to go and no one to see, and if Sam has to see another episode of Maury he's going to pluck his own eyeballs out.

Sam looks at the empty second bed in his room and knows he should stop getting doubles, but the habit is so ingrained that he feels if he breaks it, it'll just be another way he's disconnected from Dean.

He almost wishes he had've stayed with Dean, now.

It has to be better than this where Dean is, apocalypse and all.

*

Sam dreams of Dean more often than not. Funnily enough, he dreams about life before heaven and hell came into play, before the day he watched Dean die a hundred times in a row. It was much simpler then, and Sam longs for it now like he never has before.  
With nothing else better to do except cruise mindlessly over state lines, Sam has come to realize that he doesn't have much of a life without Dean around. He figures his dreams are trying to compensate for the loss he feels burning its way deep in his chest.

That compensation would be okay, too, if Sam didn't know that the real deal was out there right now, somewhere.

*

It's been a month since they've parted ways, and even though Sam's got a million and a half voicemails clogging up his cell phone, not a single one of them is from Dean. He picks up the cell phone, stares at the bright white of the LCD screen and wonders; if he thinks hard enough, will it ring with Dean's name attached?

Sam's too tired to try, but that doesn't mean he won't some day.  
In the meantime, he'll hope Dean is feeling the distance as much as Sam is. Sam can't handle the thought of Dean being happier without him around – that's just too much.

Even though he gets the sinking feeling that maybe, just maybe, Dean is.

*

After three months and no word, Sam decides to cease worrying whether Dean will ever contact him again. That decision, though, doesn't stop Sam from fumbling for his phone every time it vibrates to see who's calling. He scrolls through his missed calls list: 4 from Bobby, 2 from Ellen, 3 from Rufus who is probably calling because Bobby hasn't gotten through.

One of these days he'll pick up the line, but today isn't that day. Today is the day for Philly steak and cheese.

He pointedly ignores the thought that he's only eating it because it's one of Dean's favourite meals.

*

Sam doesn't even think the people he passes by on the street see him, he's so transparent, even when he does happen across a stray job and dispatch a ghost for an elderly lady. He may have added an extra couple of years to her life that the ghost would've otherwise scared away, but it earns Sam nothing in the way of satisfaction.

Sam's phone doesn't vibrate anymore, either. It's not until he goes a whole week without a single call that Sam realizes how truly alone he is. Sam's got no one to blame but himself for that, though – no one calls and no one leaves voicemails because they know Sam isn't going to pick up, isn't going to listen to anyone that isn't Dean.

He knows, because the last voicemail from Bobby – he'd gotten it in New Hampshire and listened to it in Maine – made it clear. It's like Sam just can't stop digging holes for himself, and you know what they say about holes.

In Rhode Island, Sam wakes up in the middle of the night and smacks his phone straight off of the table in an effort to actually reach it. It's done ringing by the time Sam sleepily grabs hold of it, but the number says 'private' and he has one new voicemail. With his luck it'd be a random telemarketer, but he presses the 1 on his speed dial and listens anyway.

There is some crackling on the line, then, surprisingly, Dean's gruff voice, sounding weary to the bone.

"I'm at Bobby's," it says. "Come on home, Sammy."

Then the line goes dead, and the cheerful automation tells him there are no more new messages.  
Sam doesn't know how he should feel right now, and maybe some day soon he'll have time to sort through and get all his emotions lined up in a neat little row, but for now?

He's getting the hell out of this motel.


End file.
